Republicans at the Wisconsin Capitol are pushing to end the state’s Elections Commission.
The latest plan comes from Senate elections boss Dan Knodl and 10 Assembly Republicans. They want to get rid of the commission and shift the power to oversee elections to the secretary of state.
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At least one Republican lawmaker wants to know if Wisconsin’s governor has any other secret email.
Lawmakers and reform groups in the state are asking questions after a report unveiled Gov. Tony Evers has a secret email account.
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Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources is not surprised by the low numbers out of the state’s first weekend of gun deer hunting and not worried, yet.
The DNR reported hunters harvested 92,050 deer last weekend, compared to 103,623 for the first weekend last year.
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There are no surprises among the reactions to the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s questions about drawing new political maps in the state.
A number of lawmakers and advocacy groups weighed in after the high court Tuesday heard arguments to redraw the state’s legislative maps.
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As of Nov. 14, three ballot measures have been certified for Wisconsin’s statewide ballot in 2024, including three new certifications Ballotpedia tracked from Nov. 8-14. All three measures are legislatively referred constitutional amendments on the ballot, two April 2 and one Nov. 5.
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Litigation of school choice and school vouchers in Wisconsin Supreme Court should end, the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce said on Wednesday.
The state’s largest business group filed an amicus brief with the court. It asks justices to reject the lawsuit that seeks to end school choice and school vouchers.
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Congressman Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., says that universities should be graded in regard to antisemitism on a scale for the public to see.
“On the antisemitic thing, groups ought to come out and rank the universities: A, B, C, D and E,” Grothman said on the Thursday edition of the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “Say if you have a Jewish child. Would you want them to go to this university? What university would want to be labeled an F for Jewish children?”
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A legal challenge to Wisconsin’s new rules for wedding barns may already be in the works.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty told The Center Square it is in the process of talking to wedding barn owners across the state about the next steps after it says the Wisconsin Legislature essentially voted to put them out of business.
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Despite test scores that show nearly 60% of students in Wisconsin schools cannot read or do math at grade level, more than 90% of school districts in the state meet the state’s expectations.
The Department of Public Instruction recently released its school and school district report cards.
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The top Republican in the Wisconsin Assembly says he is encouraged by the University of Wisconsin’s plan to focus on in-demand degrees, but it’s not enough to move him off his block of the university’s pay raises.
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One of Wisconsin’s congressmen is warning about a potential Chinese strategy to corner the market on electric cars.
Congressman Mike Gallagher and other members of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party this week sent a letter to the U.S. ambassador warning China may flood the U.S. market with electric vehicles.
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Few of the election reforms Wisconsin Republicans plan to pass will likely get the governor’s signature.
The State Assembly late Thursday approved nearly a dozen or so pieces of legislation that deal with how people vote and how elections are run in the state.
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The plan to spend taxpayer dollars on the Milwaukee Brewers’ ballpark may still be short of votes at the Wisconsin Capitol.
A number of Republican senators on Wednesday criticized the latest version of the plan.
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Wisconsin voters will get two questions about election integrity next fall.
The State Senate approved proposed constitutional amendments that would clarify that only U.S. citizens 18 years old and older can vote in the state, and would ban the use of so-called outside private money in Wisconsin elections.
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Congressman Tom Tiffany, R-Wi., introduced legislation to address environmental concerns of illegal immigration, such as the millions of pounds of trash left near and on the southern border.
“If it’s eight pounds of trash and we’re up to nearly 10 million people, that’s 80 million pounds of trash that have been dumped here in the United States of America,” Tiffany said on the Monday edition of the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “But as we all know, the immigration situation, the illegal immigration that’s going on with the open border has affected us in so many different ways.”
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The former head of the Wisconsin Assembly’s elections committee is, once again, blasting Speaker Robin Vos for his handling of the state’s elections administrator.
State Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, on Monday criticized Vos despite his decision last week to move forward with articles of impeachment against Meagan Wolfe.
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The plan that would add protections for election workers in Wisconsin, including a felony charge for anyone who assaults a poll worker, is bringing Republicans and Democrats together.
The Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections held a hearing on a series of election bills, including AB 577 that would expand protection for frontline election workers throughout the state.
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There is a new round of criticism for Gov. Tony Evers for his latest round of federal coronavirus spending.
On Thursday, the governor announced plans to spend $36 million on a list of projects.
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A new report says Wisconsin is outpacing the rest of the country when it comes to smaller families.
The Wisconsin Policy Forum is out with a new report that says Wisconsin families have shrunk faster than other states for about the last 50 years.
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Wisconsin’s governor is criticizing Republican lawmakers for not following science and what he is calling an “antipathy” toward LGBTQ people.
The governor said in an interview with WisEeye he will veto the Republican-backed plan to ban sex change operations and hormone therapy for children in Wisconsin.
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The head of Wisconsin’s economic development office isn’t worried about the state’s big businesses and artificial intelligence. She is worried about the number of small businesses which may not be prepared.
Gov. Evers Task Force on Workforce and Artificial Intelligence held its first meeting Monday.
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Republicans at the Wisconsin Capitol say students need free speech protections on University of Wisconsin campuses.
The Assembly Committee on Colleges and University held a public hearing on a pair of plans Republicans say will not only make sure the Universities of Wisconsin are respecting the First Amendment but will also open the campus to more students.
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The plan to spend $500 million in taxpayer money on the Milwaukee Brewers’ stadium may look different once it gets through the Wisconsin Senate.
A Senate panel held a hearing on the stadium funding proposal Wednesday and immediately hit supporters with questions.
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Schools across Wisconsin have not yet rebounded from enrollment losses during the coronavirus outbreak.
A recent report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum found more than 4,500 students are still “missing.”
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An official with a refugee resettlement organization told The Wisconsin Daily Star that 75 refugees are coming to Wisconsin’s Chippewa Valley beginning in early January, and there’s nothing opponents of the resettlement plan can do about it.
Tami McLaughlin, office director of World Relief Wisconsin-Fox Valley, said the Biden administration has signed off on the plan, and the federal government is the final authority.
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There is traditional support for and opposition against a series of constitutional amendments that deal with voting in Wisconsin.
The Joint Senate Shared Revenue, Elections and Consumer Protection and Assembly Campaigns and Elections Committees held a public hearing Tuesday on three amendments.
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Eau Claire residents are speaking out against a plan to relocate potentially hundreds of Somali refugees to the northwest Wisconsin community without the consent of elected city officials.
One Eau Claire County resident who spoke to The Wisconsin Daily Star said the relocation effort amounts to “taxation without representation.”
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Wisconsin’s top economist says the state’s economy is in a great place to grow, as long as the state doesn’t lose what makes it great.
John Koskinen, the chief economist for the state of Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Economic Summit on Monday that Wisconsin has a strong workforce that wants to work, a large and solid manufacturing base and the potential to grow.
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In September of 2020, then-Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett proposed cutting 120 police officers from about 1,800 budgeted positions in the 2021 budget.
Barrett proposed the cuts, in part, due to budget constraints amid a national and local clamor to divert resources from policing just four months after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police.
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Republicans and Democrats each question the plan to change the state’s indefinitely confined voter rules at the Wisconsin Capitol.
Rep. Cindi Duchow, R-Town of Delafield, presented her plan to tighten the state’s indefinitely confined voter law by defining what indefinitely confined means, requiring people apply for a separate indefinitely confined absentee ballot, clarifies a public health emergency does not allow people to claim indefinitely confined status and would ban people from voting indefinitely confined if they vote in person.
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Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature withheld pay raises for employees of the University of Wisconsin System (UW) over its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) funding, according to the Associated Press.
Wisconsin Republicans voted in June to cut the UW System’s budget by $32 million, which is the estimated amount it spends on DEI over a 2-year period. Wisconsin Republicans denied the raises Tuesday in a bid to pressure the system to cut the spending, according to the AP.
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Few at the Wisconsin capital is happy about the University of Wisconsin’s decision to end in-person classes at two regional campuses, though they are not shocked.
University president Jay Rothman announced the university will end face-to-face classes at UW-Milwaukee Washington County and UW Oshkosh Fond du Lac.
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Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ announcement he will give $170 million to child care providers in the state is not going over well with the Republican leader of the Wisconsin Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu accused the governor of misleading families across the state.
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Wisconsin Right to Life state Director Dan Miller has filed a second round of complaints with the Wisconsin Medical Examining Board demanding that the agency investigate Wisconsin doctors illegally performing abortions in defiance of state law.
Miller filed his first complaints late last month after Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin announced it would resume abortions at its Madison and Milwaukee clinics.
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Wisconsin lawmakers passed a series of bills on Thursday that ban doctors from performing sex change surgeries on minors and bar male athletes from participating in women’s sports, according to the Cap Times.
The package contains three bills, two of which prohibit biological men from competing in girls’ K-12 sports and women’s collegiate sports, while the third would cause a physician to lose their medical license if they perform a sex change surgery or administer puberty blockers to a minor, according to the texts. The Wisconsin Assembly passed the package, sending the bills to the Senate for final approval before heading to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ desk, who has said he would veto the legislation, the Cap Times reported.
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Former President Donald Trump is leading President Joe Biden in the crucial battleground state of Wisconsin following a series of similar findings in other key swing states, according to a Thursday poll.
Trump is beating Biden 42% to 40% among Wisconsin voters with 11% choosing someone else and 8% remaining undecided, according to an Emerson College survey. The poll comes after several other recent battleground state surveys found Trump ahead of Biden, including in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
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Nearly 60% of students in Wisconsin’s Public Schools continue to be unable to read, write or do math at grade level.
The State’s Department of Public Instruction released the latest standardized test scores Tuesday, and they show 39.2% of public school students are proficient or better in reading, while 41.1% are proficient or better in math.
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The showdown over Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz and the state’s redistricting process continues after Protasiewicz announced she would not recuse herself from two challenges to Wisconsin’s electoral maps.
“I will set aside my opinions and decide cases based on the law. There will surely be many cases in which I reach results that I personally dislike. That is what it means to be a judge,” she said in a statement.
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Wisconsin voters may be able to ban “Zuckerbucks” — the injection of private money into public election administration — from their elections next year, before the 2024 general election.
The Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) poured nearly $350 million into local elections offices managing the 2020 election, with most of the funds donated to the nonprofit by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The nonprofit has claimed its 2020 election grants — colloquially known as “Zuckerbucks” — were allocated without partisan preference to make voting safer amid the pandemic.
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Wisconsin’s governor says he doesn’t want to see new security measures at the state capitol after an armed man entered the statehouse.
Gov. Tony Evers told reporters Friday he doesn’t want metal detectors and other shows of force to be installed at the statehouse.
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The disbarment trial of Donald Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar, John Eastman, wrapped up its seventh week on Friday, with more testimony from Kari Lake’s attorney Kurt Olsen, and Eastman resuming the stand briefly at the end. Olsen discussed several laws he said he believes were violated by state election officials in Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Olsen began testifying about a Motion for Leave to File a Bill of Complaint that he and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking to stop Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin from certifying their 2020 election results due to multiple violations of state law and constitutional problems. One of the reasons he said he brought the complaint was that signature verification was halted in the 2020 election in Detroit.
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The plan to use more than $600 million in taxpayer money to pay for work in American Family field and keep the Brewers in Milwaukee until 2050 is not done, but the pitch for the funding package is set.
State Rep. Rob Brooks, R-Saukville, told lawmakers Thursday at the first public hearing in the stadium funding package that only Milwaukee and Milwaukee County will be paying for the stadium.
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A discussion on black conservativism that took place on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and was broadcast live on Zoom on Saturday, Sept. 30 was interrupted by what appeared to be a coordinated protest when someone hacked into the online portion, insulted speakers with vulgar language and was joined by a handful of others who exposed themselves onscreen nude or masturbating.
They did not show their faces.
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Senate President Chris Kapenga is urging the Assembly to take up the impeachment of rogue Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe, who was ousted by the Republican-controlled Senate nearly a month ago but refuses to step down.
In a letter to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), Kapenga wrote that it is unprecedented for a state appointee to refuse to obey the Senate through its advice and consent powers, as Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) Administrator Meagan Wolfe has done.
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In a major victory for parental rights, a Waukesha County judge has ruled the Kettle Moraine School District’s policy of affirming students’ preferred gender identities without notifying guardians is a violation of basic constitutional rights.
Judge Michael P. Maxwell, in what is expected to be a nationally watched ruling, found the southeast Wisconsin school district violated parents’ constitutional rights to raise their own children by allowing minor students to change gender identity at school without parental consent, and even over their objection.
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A group with ties to national Democrats filed a lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s requirement that someone sign off on absentee votes in the state.
The Elias law firm filed lawsuit on behalf of four Wisconsin voters that claims the state’s witness requirement violates both the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Voting Rights Act of 1970.
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The League of Women Voters in Wisconsin is taking a stand on the fight between Republican lawmakers and the University of Wisconsin over diversity, equity and inclusion money.
The League encouraged Republicans to release $32 million that’s being held in an effort to get the university to move away from diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
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The beginning of Wisconsin’s new task force on human trafficking is coming with a warning.
Lawmakers on Wednesday held the first meeting of House Speaker Robin Vos’ Task Force On Human Trafficking, and while the group said the focus will be on victims, it will also delve into the details of the trafficking of children and other young people.
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As concerns mount about alleged Biden family pay-to-play schemes, U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher is introducing the Deterring Attempts at Dirty Deals by Youngsters — or DADDY — Act.
The bill bans immediate family members of the president, vice president, and cabinet officials from working for certain foreign companies while their family members are in office.
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The woman in charge of Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services said public health managers in the state made mistakes in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak.
DHS Secretary Nominee Kirsten Johnson on Thursday defended the decisions she and other public health department leaders made during the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020.
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